Why I Am Not a Member of the American Psychological Association
chalquist.com
chalquist.com
It does remind me of a story on NPR (about a book -- http://www.amazon.com/Harvard-Unabomber-Education-American-T...) detailing how a prominent psychology professor basically tortured a group of students over a period of years, concentrating special intensity for an awkward scholarship student, Theodore Kaczynski.
Not to mention the strong historical Silicon Valley links to the "defense", prison, law-enforcement and intelligence industries.
One also has to ask what weight should be given to indirect cooperation with and enablement of said industries. If one is not working for a defense contractor, but a supplier of said contractor, or if one even takes money from or in any way benefits from these contractors or contractors of contractors, what's your culpability? Where do you draw the line?
I am also reminded of "IBM and the Holocaust",[1] which is deserving of its own HN article.
Here are the NPR story and related Atlantic article by the author of the book:
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2000/06/harvard-...
http://download.npr.org/real.npr.na-central/npr/wesat/2000/0...
I do agree with the author about complicity in torture and am glad a few have stood up to that.
The nugget though is buried in the tail of the piece:
Craig Chalquist, PhD is a member of Psychologists for Social Responsibility.
That is: there is an alternate organization.
More on PsySR here: http://psysr.org/
That said, the more the public knows about the list of terribles here, and Edward Bernays in particular, the better.
I also very strongly recommend reading the works of Jerry Mander, an economics-trained advertising executive who paired up with Sierra Club organizer (and president) David Brower to create some of the first environmental advertising and outreach campaigns, co-founded Friends of the Earth (backed by ARCO CEO Robert O Anderson, ponder that), and has written a couple of highly worthwhile books, Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television and The Capitalism Papers.
The articled submitted here is from 2013 (excerpted from a 2013 publication, but posted on a website with a 2010 copyright notice). He tries to sum up the history of a large organization more than a century old with a few anecdotes. I wonder how the author, whose website[2] has links to some more recent writings, prioritizes his critique of the American Psychological Association now. (And by the way, what do you fellow participants here on Hacker News think of the author's website, from which the kind submission here was linked?)
To be fair, the article's author did not simply choose a few random rank-and-file members of the APA. By my count, he provided as evidence the words and deeds six APA Presidents:
John Watson
D. O. Hebb
Martin Seligman
Joseph Matarazzo
Patrick DeLeon
Ronald LevantYes, that's certainly true. But there's one important difference between the APA and scientific organizations -- scientific organizations can be shamed into following the evidence.
In psychology, if there's no theory to suit your fancy, you can invent one and gain a following, and your theory doesn't have to pass a reality test or forge a consensus -- indeed, psychology is overflowing with theories in open conflict. Here's an example: those who have very narrow personal focus and/or a lack of interest in relationships, might be described as having (a) Asperger Syndrome, or (b) Grit.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grit_(personality_trait)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asperger_syndrome
For those who claim the described symptoms prove Asperger's, there has been much recent controversial activity asserting that it's a condition on the Autism spectrum. For those who claim the symptoms prove a person possesses Grit, there are now movements to empower and offer therapy to intensify this trait. But there's no effort to compare these views either to each other or to reality.
The described symptoms might represent a treatable mental illness, as the Asperger's advocates assert -- no one knows. They might represent a natural gift, one possessed by many successful people, and might even represent a positive evolutionary adaptation to a changing environment. No one can persuasively argue that view either, for lack of solid evidence, for lack of anything resembling science.
Bill Gates probably possesses Grit, and certainly has an Asperger's diagnosis -- assigned by someone who never interviewed him. Albert Einstein, the same. Thomas Jefferson. Many others -- all members of both these opposing schools of thought.
In physics, Lee Smolin can criticize string theory (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Trouble_with_Physics) for (in effect) not really being a theory on the ground that it's untestable, and his views are widely read by people who don't see this as a challenge to physics -- quite the opposite. In psychology, critics have a much more difficult time because nothing is either demonstrably true or false. This is why two sequential chairs of the NIMH (Steve Hyman and Thomas Insel) have criticized their own profession's disregard for science, only to be (so far) shouted down by vested interests within the field.
The defense offered by the field's defenders can be concisely summarized -- no one really knows how science is defined, therefore one cannot persuasively describe something as unscientific. Shockingly, this is a view widely held among mental health workers. But this isn't a tenable view among physicists and other workers in scientific fields, who find that science's definition is very clear.
For the record, I'm not entirely unsympathetic to your position though I think some of your arguments are not well founded, and I downvoted this comment and its parent.
Several have tried to do just that, saying, for example, that I am wrong and that voting constitutes science, or that control groups aren't essential to serious human studies. While simultaneously downvoting, of course.
> For the record, I'm not entirely unsympathetic to your position though I think some of your arguments are not well founded, and I downvoted this comment and its parent.
You are aware, are you not, that your being in disagreement with a legitimate viewpoint is not a valid reason to downvote, yes? That a post should contribute nothing to the conversation, or otherwise be egregiously at fault to deserve that remedy?
As to my views being "not well founded", if that were true, because I state my views so clearly it should be possible -- not to say easy -- to persuasively argue against them, demolish them with logic, by taking the high road. No one can do that, and no one has done that.
"While simultaneously downvoting, of course."
You have no way of knowing that it was the same people.
"You are aware, are you not, that your being in disagreement with a legitimate viewpoint is not a valid reason to downvote, yes? That a post should contribute nothing to the conversation, or otherwise be egregiously at fault to deserve that remedy?"
I am aware. It is not crazy to believe that comments repeating the same points over and over are contributing nothing to the conversation. That said, as I mentioned above, I downvoted only the comment ranting about downvotes.
"No one can do that, and no one has done that."
I believe I have done so in more than one instance; you ignore the points I make, accuse me of supporting positions expressed by others, demolish those points (often effectively, sometimes relying on other bad reasoning), and declare victory. If you'd actually engage intellectually rather than rhetorically, it would be a more productive experience for everyone. As is, it's exhausting and unproductive, and has no bearing on the accuracy of either position - which is frustrating, because I would like to know if I'm wrong.
In a previous age, these organizations played an important role in disseminating curated information to its members, with the assumption that it was curated for maximum benefit to those who would ultimately be treated. Today, the Internet has shown that the curation may not be as completely benevolent as we would have hoped as corporate interests subtly and not-so-subtley influence what gets propagated.
Unfortunately, it is difficult, if not impossible, to "fix" a heavily entrenched bureaucracy. Instead, I think the best we can hope for it to make them inconsequential. Fortunately, we now have the ability to do this, because we now have the raw information available with just a few clicks. In effect, the wisdom of crowds can overcome the edicts of the anointed[3].
The author of this article is taking a stand, saying that the TLA[4] associated with his field does not represent psychology as he sees it. I think this is a wonderful step, and I would trust him more as a psychologist as a result[5]. As more professionals eschew their self-serving organizations, health care will get better, because those that step away inevitably do so recognizing they have to become the curators of their own knowledge.
So when you hear a health care provider is not a member of an organization you would expect them to be, instead of immediately considering it a black mark on their score card, take some time to learn why. You may find they are a better provider for it.
1. Sometimes, it is really hard to use the word nutrition and science together. There is some, but most of it is complete garbage compiled at incredible cost.
2. Sponsorship alone is not a problem, but it's a very dangerous line to walk. Sponsorship that conflicts with the core values of your organization is always a problem. Ask yourself: how strongly would the ADA be pushing for a true cure for diabetes, knowing 1) it would stop having a reason to exist and 2) its major sponsors would take a massive hit in profits? Is it surprising "managing" is the new word for how we treat illnesses?
3. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KzPnnDDCIjo
4. "Three letter acronym"
5. Stepping away is not the only option. There is, for example, a strong group (Dietitians for Professional Integrity) working to change the AAND internally. I hope they succeed. http://integritydietitians.org/
I am not convinced that the world of "organic" and "natural" is any better. A lot of that stuff is about using fear mongering to create a manufactured and scientifically baseless division between a higher priced tier of food for yuppies and a lower priced tier for the riff raff. I've heard it called "food gentrification." It's all about market segmentation and charging more to those who can be propagandized into paying it. Bernays would be proud.
Eco-ideology is also used heavily to prevent the construction of new housing and infrastructure to artificially limit supply to the benefit of banks and existing property owners.
My level of trust in pretty much any letter agency or social/political movement is low across the board. Nearly anything with a soapbox seems to be a front for something that reduces to political propaganda or wallet emptying. Right or left, religious or secular, green or whatever, it doesn't seem to matter. Nothing is true; everything is an advertisement.
IMHO we live in a world where the law is do your own primary research or be exploited. No exceptions. I am not sure if it was ever different or if people are just becoming more aware.
This seems to be an incredibly disempowering perspective.
It is herds and movements that are disempowering.
It's still possible to organize too. People should organize on concrete issues and leave the ideology (levers for mass manipulation) at the door. That way it's a lot harder to leverage group identity signifiers and mythological elements to manipulate large numbers of people while masking ones real agenda. For example, we might create an agency whose goal is to reduce CO2 emissions. That's it. No other bandwagons are implied.
Don't get me wrong. I do see the universality of manipulation as a serious social pathology. I just don't know what to do about it in a world where people have to get paid. Seems to me that if money is required to make things happen, only things that are motivated by money or that serve the agendas of those with it will happen.
The Civil Rights movement.
The labor movement.
The environmental movement.
The suffragette movement.
The abolitionist movement.
The free speech movement.
The list can go on and on.
Whatever else you could say about these movements, agree or disagree with their aims or effects, its difficult to give credence to the view that they weren't effective or empowering to their members or that their goals could have been achieved without organization.
I see very little on the contemporary stage that in any way resembles those movements. More specifically I see almost nothing that is in any way about improving human life. It all just looks like sneaky forms of marketing or ideological wank that is irrelevant to any actual measure of freedom, dignity, or well being.
IMHO it all went off the rails in the 70s. It's interesting to me in light of Peter Thiel's contention that fundamental technological innovation has stagnated since then, a view I very strongly agree with. Maybe something really deep and fundamental broke and both these things are symptoms.
Or maybe the Internet has made most people not care about modern movements, and billionare backdoor power has made it safe to ignore popular unrest.
The radical left (like Graeber and Chomsky) points out one factor since the 70's is the financialization of the economy. (Financial institutions prefer short-term profits to long-term development.) Also, there's the rise of "neoliberalism", which Graeber argues prefers to destroy capitalism just to achieve one success: getting people to believe there's no alternative to capitalism.
If all that capitalist propaganda's been successful in beating imagination out of people, that they can do far better than the status quo, maybe that explains why people are so depoliticized. Fewer people have passionate visions for a better world.
Getting back to the pragmatic, I think environmentalism is an exception among the movements listed above. I'm not saying it has no good points -- it has many good points. Yet it's a movement that seems to embody the problem I'm talking about in a number of ways. Not coincidentally IMHO it came of age as a movement in the 70s.
(Maybe we should just strike all thought from the 70s from the intellectual record and make the calendar go 1969, 1980, 1981...?)
Case in point:
Nobody can seem to explain to me how simultaneously ditching fossil fuels and nuclear power without replacements is going to do anything other than impoverish the majority of humanity. I'm all for renewable energy, but it's not ready yet and won't be until the storage problem is well and truly solved.
If you talk to greens on this issue you get denial or cognitive dissonance. If you dig deeper, I personally have found that you run into what seems to be a quiet belief that losing most of humanity would be a good thing... especially if the loss occurred mostly among the poor. I'm not saying all greens hold this view, but it's in the milieu. Don't believe me? Head over to Reddit and read the comments to any article about the Ebola epidemic. I've also personally heard greens express this view verbally to me, like one anti-vaccination dude who told me that "there's too many people anyway" implying that we need more disease. He said that people with "a strong immune system and good nutrition" don't need vaccines -- in other words the wealthy and the genetic ubermenschen.
A century ago that would have been considered a radical right wing social Darwinist opinion and would have put you in the same camp as all the budding European fascists obsessed with the arguments of Oswald Spengler. Yet today it's a "left wing" viewpoint. Blech. What bullshit.
IMHO there is no left today. There are reactionaries of the right and reactionaries of the "new left."
Among the greens who don't hold this view, you nevertheless get total cognitive blank-out on this issue. Either they remain committed to the idea that we could just swap out solar and wind for fossil fuels and nuclear despite the copious math that says otherwise, or they just flat out refuse to think about it in any depth.
You also see a lot of marketing of poverty as a good thing. "Back to nature," some forms of minimalism, permaculture which was called land-serfdom in the 1500s, etc. These things are poverty, folks, and you're not going to like it once the novelty of it wears off.
I'm very much for solar and wind energy-- I just think there's a long hard R&D slog between now and dirt cheap gigawatt-hour-scale energy storage. Meanwhile we need to get off fossil fuels yesterday.
I can't help but at least suspect that the movement is co-opted and manipulated by the fossil fuel industry behind the scenes with the goal of using green ideology to prevent the emergence of any real competition. I also can't help but see the Malthusian elements of green ideology as a pressure valve permitting the release of latent economic/cultural elitism and racism that are no longer politically correct to state explicitly and openly. It's a perfect example of the kind of large scale systematic deception by social movement that I'm talking about -- the actual goals are not the stated goals and are hidden behind ideological and symbolic blinds.
You might be interested in reading "Solar is Ready Now"[1] ("now" being 2011)
[1] - http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2011/06/09/241120/solar-is-...
> The Civil Rights movement.
> The labor movement.
> The environmental movement.
> The suffragette movement.
> The abolitionist movement.
> The free speech movement.
> The list can go on and on.
Indeed it does, and some will argue that, with some noteworthy exceptions, your list, and other similar lists, proves the point being made by the OP. Most public movements only postpone what they protest against -- the labor movement stands as a classic case.
> Whatever else you could say about these movements, agree or disagree with their aims or effects, its difficult to give credence to the view that they weren't effective or empowering to their members or that their goals could have been achieved without organization.
From a scientific standpoint, we cannot say whether these movements were causes or effects. By the time people were rightly condemning slave ownership on any scale in the U.S., Great Britain had abandoned slavery decades before, and many civilized people in the U.S. and elsewhere saw slavery's abandonment as inevitable.
As to the labor movement, historically it described an arc between ineffectiveness and corruption -- between a promise of a solution, to becoming a bigger problem than the issue it claimed to address.
As to free speech -- well, I see this as a classic example of modern government's basic strategy, which is to find out what people are going to do anyway, order them to do it, then try to take credit for the outcome.
I am sure the South would happily have held slaves for much longer than it did. I remember when I was a kid car manufacturers claimed they would go bankrupt if they had to install catalytic filters. Only the pressure from the environmental movement build up the momentum for requiring those filters. Without the labor movement we would probably still work 12 hours six days a week.
But I didn't do that. I only said we cannot know scientifically whether they're causes or effects. That's an important distinction, one often overlooked in historical accounts.
Unfortunately, many in the technology field still do, and worse. Many on this very forum advocate working much longer hours in their attempts to get rich quick through the startup lottery.
At the same time, they rabidly belittle unions, membership in which would probably be the only thing short of becoming an independent consultant that could allow them to work relatively sane hours.
The 8-hour work day[1], the existence of overtime pay[2], workplace health and safety standards[3], child labor laws[4], the right to strike[5] and organize (as curtailed as these have become in recent decades) and many other labor laws in the US (not to mention Europe) would provide counterarguments.
"From a scientific standpoint, we cannot say whether these movements were causes or effects."
The causation is usually quite clear, if you educate yourself as to what happened during these movements.
Much of America saw segregation[6] as the natural order of the world and couldn't imagine that people of different races could or should "intermix". Many very powerful segregation proponents fought tooth and claw to keep it alive, killing, torturing, and imprisoning countless people that they saw as their enemies.
If it weren't for the Civil Rights[7] movement, segregation probably would have continued for many more decades, and I would surprised if people of different races could sit in the same restaurants or marry one another in the US by the turn of the 21st century.
The heart of the Free Speech[8] movement was in the Bay Area, so I would like to hope that those HN members that hail from Silicon Valley or SF shouldn't need to have its history recapped for them, so I'll just say that the University of California had dug in its heels against giving in to any of the students' demands, and were it not for their massive and persuasive protests, there's no evidence that it would have been achieved without the movement.
Some decades later, a similar set of events lead to the appointment of the first Deaf President at Gaulladet.[9]
The end of Apartheid[10] in South Africa: due to a mass movement against it.
The independence of India[11] (and many others) was the result of a mass movement.
Those who already know the history of these movements must forgive me for such obvious and superfluous citations. I only do so because I fear that the only way off-hand claims of the ineffectiveness of such movements could be taken seriously is if one had a profound ignorance of history (for which the citations could hopefully make a little self-education easier, for those of a curious mind), or a deep ideological opposition to them -- which I'm afraid no citations are likely to cure.
You say, "As to the labor movement, historically it described an arc between ineffectiveness and corruption -- between a promise of a solution, to becoming a bigger problem than the issue it claimed to address."
Who other than bitter ideological opponents would describe it as such?
I'm sure many American conservatives and "pro-business" proponents see having their employees work shorter days, having to pay pesky overtime pay and compensate them for on-the-job injuries as "a bigger problem than the issue they claim to address".
I've also seen similar criticisms from Marxists who think anything short of bloody revolution is a weak compromise that only perpetuates capitalism.
These are not exactly "scientific standpoints", to use your term, but ideological ones. And I'd be interested to see a source for them other than the likes of the Free Republic or the Nation.
You also say, "As to free speech -- well, I see this as a classic example of modern government's basic strategy, which is to find out what people are going to do anyway, order them to do it, then try to take credit for the outcome."
Look at the history of the Free Speech movement. The students involved in those protests weren't ordered by the government to protest. Quite the contrary, they were bloodily opposed every step of the way. So I'm not sure what makes you say otherwise.
Of course, success has a million fathers and failure none. So it's no surprise that everyone would try to take credit for it now. But I'm not sure how this is supposed to discredit the original movement itself.
Please enlighten me.
[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eight-hour_day
[2] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overtime
[3] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occupational_safety_and_health
[4] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_labour
[5] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strike_action
[6] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racial_segregation_in_the_Unit...
[7] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African-American_Civil_Rights_...
[8] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_Speech_Movement
[9] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deaf_President_Now
[10] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apartheid
[11] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_independence_movement
> The causation is usually quite clear
Not in a scientific sense, not at all. Your post objects to positions I didn't take. My only point is that most of these movements took place when they did because they had become historical inevitabilities, not that the movements themselves had no real effect, which no one can confirm nor deny.
The labor movement wasn't protesting against something in the future that could be postponed, it was protesting against the current status quo, which in many of the key aspects it was protesting against, it reversed.
Its true that over time, with less activity, some of those gains have been eroded, but I don't see there being any reasonable argument that the labor movement "only postpone[d] what they protest[ed] against".
If you think there is such an argument, I'd certainly welcome you to present it.
As an absolute statement - condemning all movements and all ideology without distinguishing between their intrinsic merits - this is extremely odd. Without "herds and movements" we'd still be clever mammals without the power of speech. Something below even tribal societies, without the ability to even teach one another how to use tools or to act ethically.
The recognition that some ideals are false does not preclude having them.
> People should organize on concrete issues and leave the ideology (levers for mass manipulation) at the door
What do you think motivates people to "organize on concrete issues" and pick a side on those issues? Ideology does, 100% of the time. How is this even controversial?
More concretely, the notion that we cannot engage in an ideological movement - a party voting bloc, for example - without being subsumed by that ideology or engaging in self-defeating behavior is demonstrably false. People form coalitions because coalitions work. It's a pretty basic thing in voting theory and political science that you win more for your side if you are willing to form coalitions with differing parties and compromise.
That depends on one's narcissism index. A sufficiently narcissistic person will see it as a challenge to be proactively engaged. Someone less narcissistic will see it as a reason to give up.
More here: http://arachnoid.com/ChildrenOfNarcissus
The March of Dimes started in 1938 as the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis. They started the serious fundraising and research projects for polio, and provided about $233 million on patient care over 20 years, as well as funding research into a cure. They recruited Salk to work on it, which lead to the successful polio vaccine.
The National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis therefore no longer had a reason to exist. Quoting from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/March_of_Dimes#Criticism :
> In his book Essentials of Sociology: A Down-to-Earth Approach, sociologist Professor James M. Henslin describes March of Dimes as a bureaucracy that has taken on a life of its own through a classic example of a process called goal displacement. Faced with redundancy after Jonas Salk discovered the polio vaccine, it adopted a new mission, "fighting birth defects", which was recently changed to a vaguer goal of "breakthrough for babies", rather than disbanding.
You'll note that that they strongly pushed for a true cure. It was only afterwards where they had organization problems. You'll also note that those affected by polio still needed care, so the organization was still useful even after the vaccine.
Similarly, there were a large number of tuberculosis organization. They too changed mission after effective treatments were found. The Saranac Laboratory for the Study of Tuberculosis, for example, became the Trudeau Sanatorium, which then closed when an effective TB treatment was discovered. More famously, the National Association for the Study and Prevention of Tuberculosis, after the TB treatment discovery, became the American Lung Association.
Can you point to real-world examples where was a "true cure" but where organizations pushing for the cure ended up delaying the result, due likely to a conflict of interest with major sponsors? Because the historical record suggests that the organizations are more likely to continue to exist be changing focus, then by suppressing or delaying a cure.
Regarding another aspect of #2, no one knows what a diabetes treatment might be. It could be an expensive treatment. It could take several years for a cure to take effect. It could be a preventative, which only helps those without diabetes but not those who currently have it. It could help one type of diabetes but not another. Some of these are very financially rewarding.
Since members of the ADA almost certainly have friends or relatives who have diabetes, they have a strong emotional reason to want success, independent of money. Since it's impossible to know beforehand if a certain treatment path will be successful, much less the financial possibilities of a successful treatment, it's hard to really game the system that way. Since multiple organizations are working on a cure, it's hard also to game all of the researchers.
Mind you, there's no promise that there is a true cure for diabetes. But there are ways to manage it, hence the terminology.
BTW, I don't know what you mean by "new word." The phrase "diabetes management" dates back to at least the 1970s. Eg, http://diabetes.diabetesjournals.org/content/21/Supplement_2... is a 1972 article titled "Current Unsolved Problems in Diabetes Management", and a literature search finds many other references from that era.
An n-gram search [1] suggests that the preferred phrase was "control of diabetes" until the early 1980s, with "diabetes management" overshadowing it by the mid-1990s.
[1] The n-gram search URL is https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=diabetes+manag...
If you look at how the sponsorship model works in these orgs, companies are essentially buying the ability to provide continuing education. And while I don't necessarily believe the sponsors are out-right lying, I do think they are presenting a very one-sided view.
There is a further problem that we saw as soon as the USDA published its food guide (a document that hasn't changed substantially in 30 years): the government now had a baseline of what research should try to prove. If your hypothesis didn't follow the orthodoxy, you lose your funding and perhaps your job.
Diabetes is a complex illness. We don't know the actual cause, and we don't know what actually will cure it, but today's pharmacological path sells lots of drugs and results in lots of neuropathy, amputations, heart disease and dementia. Hardly what I would call managing. It's not a given that a strong focus on diet would change anything, but it might. It's worth a try.
I fully admit to being biased. It is not only possible, but likely, that I overstated my case on TLAs caring more for themselves. Certainly, tuberculosis organizations did wonderful things. It does make me wonder if we passed a point somewhere where corporate interests in profits at any expense overshadowed the health of people. I don't like that hypothesis (I don't believe people, in general, are that selfish), so I am actively looking for alternatives. Understanding the cause helps us solve the problem.
I find it easier to believe that a diabetes researcher whose parents have diabetes is less likely to be concerned about the profit/loss statement of a sponsoring company and more concerned about the parents.
I also find it harder than you to believe there is consistent capture across all research organizations in the world. I agree that the USDA food guide is incorrectly and unduly influenced by money and politics. But that's not the only food guide in the world and the US isn't the only research system.
Other countries also have different economic goals that the US system. If a country has a single-payer national health care, and fund health research, then it's more likely to fund research in ways to reduce its health care payments.
While I agree that pharma money can and does buy influence, especially when things are ambiguous, I think that big inconsistencies across different health care and research systems is hard to pull off. I also think orthodoxy is hard to enforce in the way you suggest, especially since there's a long practice of unorthodox publications becoming part of the new orthodoxy, even to the point of winning the Nobel Prize.
Regarding diet, the diabetes literature is vast and I know very little of it. I know that those with diabetes are told to stop eating as much sugar. I'm surprised to hear that the opposite - eating more sugar - is the better diet. It's more likely that I don't understand your point.
In a cursory review (I read care.diabetesjournals.org/content/34/1/14.full ) it seems that:
> Observational studies have also shown that diets rich in vegetables and low in red meat and whole-fat dairy products are associated with a decreased risk of diabetes, whereas dietary patterns rich in red meats, processed foods, refined grains, and sweets increase diabetes risk
> Recently, a clinical trial showed that, compared with a low-fat diet, a MedDiet allowed better glycemic control and delayed the need for antidiabetes drug treatment in patients with newly diagnosed diabetes (11). However, the role of the MedDiet in the prevention of diabetes has not been tested in a clinical trial.
Which safe dietary interventions studies are you talking about? How are they different from, say, the CDC recommendations?
On the topic of other countries, it is interesting. France has largely kept its traditional diet (which is incredibly high in saturated fat), but almost all of the English speaking world has followed the US into a high-sugar, low-fat, grain-based, heart-unhealthy diet, whether grain is a primary agricultural product of that country or not.
In the end, I don't think it is all about money. Some of it is pure obtuseness. A recent 125 page report detailed the effects of salt consumption on health risk. It showed a significant increase in risk as salt consumption dropped below 2300mg/day. The Institute of Medicine has changed its recommendation as a result, but the AHA has decided 1500mg is still the right target for everybody. This is not a result of a financial agreement; instead, it seems to be more a result of an unwillingness to admit they were wrong. That's a powerful pull, because once there is a crack in the exterior, the whole wall may crumble.
In the end, I could be wrong. I'm making deductions based on appearances and behaviors coupled with the massive funds (millions and millions of dollars) being funneled into these organizations. I'm sure the researchers sitting in the labs are doing the best they can within a set of constraints dictated by the funding organizations.
On the diabetesjournals.org article, my comment would be two-fold:
First, observational studies are shit. You cannot make conclusions from them the vast majority of the time. It was smoking that brought those studies into vogue, where relative risks were in the range of 2000% to 10000% (compare that to 25% in diet studies) and absolute risks were in 20-40% (compare that to maybe 1.5% in a "highly successful" diet study).
Second, I'll leave this[1] reference. Dr. Richarch Feinman came to nutrition after teaching biochemistry in medical school. The biochemistry was so abundantly clear that he was shocked when he found out the orthodox position in nutrition is almost diametrically opposed to the biochemistry. Diabetes is a disease of carbohydrate intolerance, recommending 6-11 servings of carbohydrates a day is silly.
Now, what is missing is the causal link between over-consumption of carbohydrates and diabetes. My own hypothesis is that there are a few components: a genetic component that defines maximum tolerance and a dietary component influenced by certain foods that tend to put the body into an inflammatory state.
If one is healthy, I think one can eat just about any real food diet and remain healthy, whether paleo, low carb, Mediterranean or ovo-lacto vegetarian (vegan requires supplementation, so I can't include it in the list). If, on the other hand, one has a damaged body from eating too many not-quite-food products, the equation shifts and looks much more like what treating Type 2 diabetes looks like.
1. http://www.nutritionjrnl.com/article/S0899-9007(14)00332-3/f...
I am not competent to judge the ongoing discussions on diet. Personally, I agree with your last paragraph.
I did try to read the article but it depends on a large amount of background that I don't have.
I note that Feinman references an observational study, so probably does not consider that methodology as shit as you do.
I note also the declaration of interests section, where we learn that "Richard Feinman writes reviews for Fleishman-Hillard, whose client is the Corn Refiners Association and he has received grant support from the Veronica and Robert C. Atkins Foundation." The others work as consultants, are funded by, or in a consulting capacity for Atkins, for companies like Jenny Craig and McDonald's, for the pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly, and for a company which produces a low-carbohydrate meal replacement
If the argument "If your paycheck depends on researching how drugs impact diabetes ..." has merit then surely the argument "If your paycheck depends on researching how refined corn oil and low carbs impact diabetes" also has merit.
Why do you believe Feinman's work is any less biased by money than that of someone funded by the ADA?
For some levity, this topic easily brings to mind Woody Allen's "Sleeper": "You mean there was no deep fat? No steak or cream pies or... hot fudge?" / "Those were thought to be unhealthy... precisely the opposite of what we now know to be true."
As well as a scene in the 1951 film "The Day the Earth Stood still": when one doctor talks to the other: "[He] Says their medicine's much more advanced." / "He was very nice about it, but he made me feel like a third-class witch doctor." ... while handing the other doctor a cigarette. (This caused the audience to crack up when I saw it about 15 years ago.)
I think it's a completely valid question to ask why Feinman, Westman, et al, who all have financial ties to the their viewpoint, should be trusted. All scientists are financial vested in their results in some way, so you always have to be careful.
(An aside: Dr. Feinman is an interesting case study, though: he was a biochemistry instructor at a medical school. He had no training in nutrition at all. Because of the biochemistry, he taught his students that fat is a great energy source and too many carbs are dangerous. At some point, he was told he wasn't allowed to teach that anymore, because it went against the nutrition orthodoxy (even though it followed the biochemistry), which was when he entered the nutrition arena.)
Fortunately, we have better methods than check stubs to determine whether to accept something. I look at declarations as indicators of possible bias, but, in the end, a study is good or it is not good. It's unfortunate that it literally requires reading and understanding scientific studies if you want to figure this stuff out, because it is all so bogged down in politics and economics. It's even more unfortunate that many studies get a lot of press that fall squarely in the "not good" category.
I've seen great studies come from researchers who set out to "prove" vegetarianism was the best diet. I've seen great studies from people paid by Atkins and by Ornish (a noted very low fat vegetarian proponent). Some of the worst studies I've seen have come out of Harvard, but even those aren't uniformly bad.
The weird thing about nutrition is there is this huge disconnect between the science and the organization supposedly representing the science. The American Heart Association has studies that show saturated fat is not unhealthy, yet, as an organization, it continues its zeitgeist against it. The science is clear that sugar is absolutely horrible for diabetics, yet the ADA continues to tell diabetics it's fine to eat. Registered dietitians get continuing education credits from classes literally taught by McDonalds and CocaCola.
I cannot say with complete confidence that it is because of their sponsors, but I do think, at a minimum, the influence of corporate sponsorship as a factor in resisting change is a reasonable hypothesis that fits the data better than any other hypothesis.
So, is it possible that the ADA doesn't come out strongly for a low carb diet for Type 2 diabetics for a reason other than the fact they get most of their sponsorship money from companies that produce insulin and other diabetes drugs? Sure. A certain amount of it is inertia based on old, bad science, but I think the sponsorship money acts as a huge anchor, keeping that inertia in place.
In general diet seems to be one of the hardest fields to research. After, what, 100+ years of work?, there's still very little that seems definite.
Another one of the references that pops up in this context is Vilhjalmur Stefansson, and their attempt to overcome strong doubt that people could do well eating only meat and fish by doing exactly that for a year. (As I read just now, Stefansson was compensated for his efforts by the American Meat Institute.)
You mention inertia. While I agree, I think another valid interpretation is that money can act as a tie breaker when there's a lot of ambiguity. Selective sponsorship helps amplify the voices on the side of the fog you want people to go.
Cheers.